Shyness Linked To Brain Differences

New Scientist ^ | 6-19-2003 | Peter Farley

[blam]

Shyness linked to brain differences

19:00 19 June 03

NewScientist.com news service

A new neuroimaging study provides the strongest evidence to date that unusual shyness in children may result from differences in their brains.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine adults who had been unusually shy in childhood. When these people were shown pictures of unfamiliar faces, they displayed significantly higher activity in the amygdala than people who had been unusually outgoing as children. The amygdala is a brain structure involved in vigilance and fear.

It has long been hypothesised that extreme shyness, which emerges in infancy and often persists into adulthood, must have some distinctive signature in the developing brain. However, this idea has not been tested directly because it is difficult to conduct brain imaging experiments with very young children.

So Carl Schwartz and his Harvard colleagues did the next best thing - they studied 20-year-olds who were known to have been shy or outgoing as children. Schwartz says the study's design has in fact allowed him to support "an even more wild hypothesis" - that the brain differences underlying shyness in infancy can be seen with fMRI two decades later.

Subtle footprint

"One can detect, with these new technologies, a very subtle footprint of a very early difference," he told New Scientist

Psychiatrist Ned Kalin, at the University of Wisconsin, has studied neural circuitry in monkeys with inhibited temperaments. He is enthusiastic about the new study.

"What's exciting to me is that we really are getting a grasp on an early risk factor in kids that predicts anxiety later in life," he says. "And we're beginning to unravel and to understand the physiology that's associated with it."

Inhibited and uninhibited

Some infants boldly approach new people, objects or situations, while others are timid when faced with anything unfamiliar. Children who exhibit extreme versions of these tendencies are said by psychologists to have "uninhibited" or "inhibited" temperaments.

These temperaments are widely thought to be inborn, and each carries risks. Uninhibited children can become aggressive and antisocial in adolescence and adulthood, while inhibited children are more prone to anxiety disorders. Some inhibited children eventually develop generalised social phobia, a disabling condition in which social encounters are so terrifying that they are avoided altogether.

But Schwartz points out that only two subjects in the new study who had been inhibited as children developed social phobia. He cautions that temperaments, in themselves, are not pathologies but "are basic 'flavours' of human beings.

He hopes that further work will unveil the environmental factors that steer some inhibited children toward an anxious, unhappy adulthood.

Journal reference: Science (vol 300, p 1952)

Peter Farley

[anniegetyourgun]

I'm such a wallflower. I just don't know if I'll ever outgrow my shy tendencies.

[Bahbah]

LOL. Yah, sure.

[PISANO]

Another DISABILITY discovered!!

[wimpycat]

I remember learning about this in college. At that time, they said it's the only character trait that they could scientifically link to genetics.

[blam]

"I'm such a wallflower. I just don't know if I'll ever outgrow my shy tendencies."

I gave up and became a hermit. I seldom go anywhere I don't have to go.

[AM2000]

temperaments, in themselves, are not pathologies but "are basic 'flavours' of human beings.

Why, thank you. I'm not pathological, I'm just not a peoples person damnit.

[anniegetyourgun]

I don't think that qualifies for 'hermithood' as much as it does maturity!

[blam]

"I don't think that qualifies for 'hermithood' as much as it does maturity!"

That's just a nice way to say 'old age.'

[anniegetyourgun]

u ain't ol, blam....u's jest wize....

[festus]

I bet if they'd let us study them we could show empirically that liberals are the way they are because of differences in their brains too. They are missing the thinking part.

How would we "rehabilitate" the liberals once we establish that their condition is a mental disorder ?

[TRY ONE]

"...unusual shyness in children result from differences in their brains....???????"

Nay, not in guys.....it's penis size!

When a Junior High boy hangs his 2"er out in the in the group school restroom.....he's ruined for life!

[jacquej]

me too, Blam. I feel guilty about being so happy alone, though. I was raised by a very social, outgoing mother, who saw my critical nature, sensitivity to others, etc... as a negative. So, I still beat myself up about it, but I am so much happier on my own.

[blam]

"I am so much happier on my own."

Good for you, I do too.

[apackof2]

You are blessed to live on 380 acres and have a pack of wonderful furry friends!

[gcruse]

Being catapulted into early retirement has resulted in caring for an elderly parent after living alone for twenty years. Hell is, indeed, other people. :=0

[PoisedWoman]

I am basically a hermit, too. I was a shy child but learned to act like an extrovert, and actually am very comfortable with people once I leave the house. Leaving can produce some anxiety, even today. I've learned to plow through it. Many who know me would swear I'm a real extrovert....Little they know!

But my son was born shy, apparently, and never got over it. The easiest encounters are hard for him and he avoids people as much as possible. ....though once he gets warmed up, he's exceptionally charming. Come to think of it, my dad was socially shy, tho very aggressive in business in his own quiet way. Maybe there's something to the genetic theory of shyness.

[drhogan]

i remember reading about studies of twins that should a hereditary component to the trait of conservativism vs. liberalness. it would be interesting to do some brain imaging studies of this.

[drhogan]

"should" = "showed"

[anniegetyourgun]

I'm right there with you on the elderly parent duty. Yet, despite it all - we would probably be very strange people were we 'left alone' ......